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Monday, November 10, 2008

Here's a little interview with one of the best DotA teams in the world.

Introduce yourselves

Hello, my name is Romi, also known as fnaticMSI.melen and I act as Fnatic DotA's spokesperson/player.

Can you update us on the current roster of your team and what role each of you play?

Our current roster is:

United StatesNeha "Rinoa" Nair (manager)

Indonesia Ritter "RitteR" Rusli as Team leader (any role)

IndonesiaRomi "melen" Gunawan as spokesperson (support heroes)

IndonesiaAriyanto "Lakuci" Sony (carry heroes)

Indonesia Sugiarto "BaHaMuT" Cahyadi (any role)

IndonesiaFarand "KoaLa" Kowara (any role)

With a current 5-man roster, will Fnatic be adding any new members in the near future to ensure the team has enough players for tournaments?

We don’t like to use more members than necessary, so we don’t have any plans to add anyone to our roster. We try to schedule matches as best as we can and that’s why we limit how many online tournaments we play.

Did you guys leave XcN for Fnatic?

It’s an honour for us to join the Fnatic team. Fnatic is very well known in the gaming world, just what any gamer dreams of to become professional. Basically we joined to get more opportunities to travel to overseas tournaments and Fnatic made that possible.

How do you like Fnatic compared to XcN?

Fnatic is very professional and supportive. Who doesn’t know Fnatic in gaming? ^.^ We can't complain about our new organization, they have been very helpful along with our sponsors and we hope we will not disappoint them. We will do our best always to bring pride to their name! Before we joined Fnatic, we grew up with XcN Gaming. XcN was a big part of our success also, without XCN maybe you would not know us hehehe….

You recently added Koala due to Neo's departure from the team. How are you adapting to this?

We trained a lot more to understand his character and his game style. We also trained a lot harder after he joined Fnatic in preparation for MGC 2008. KoaLa has been proven to be a strong player, and we are looking forward to seeing him grow even more with us.

How does Fnatic normally prepare before a big game? (Eg. More rest than usual? Watch replays? Keep practicing?)

We train every single day and sometimes we gather at my house or Ritter's house to discuss tactics. Also, watching replays is a personal responsibility for all the members. We analyze our opponents replays as well, as a team.

Besides playing DotA, what does team Fnatic normally do together?

Sometimes we go hang out together like watching movies, going to a buffet or dimsum, play Fufu Ninja, etc.

Fnatic has been really active recently travelling everywhere to participate in offline tournament. Recently, Fnatic won MGC2008 in China. Do you have anything to say about that?

Firstly, we give our thanks to God who made us champion of MGC2008 in China. We didn't believe we could get champion after we lost our first match. We just tried to forget about the loss and focus to win our games 1 by 1 until the very end.

How did you find China? Many have said that you guys cannot be separated in the Chinese land. Why is that?

Only KoaLa could speak a little bit of Chinese on our team. If we ever got separated from him, we would have got lost LOL…

You were recently knocked out in the first game of Prime Defending 11. How did that happened?

It's extremely difficult everytime we play against European teams. Too many lag issues, but we always give our best. And for our fans please don’t worry, we still got many online tournaments to come, so stay tuned and be my guest to watch our replays ^.^

The next big tournament is probably SMM Grand National DotA Tournament which will be held in Malaysia. What do you think about the prize money?

Yes, we will be going to SMM. The prizes are much higher which makes our team happy and eager to win. I hope we can bring home the title. Many big teams will come as I know like MYM, Ehome, KingSurf, etc. Also we will meet our manager Rinoa for the first time, can't wait ^.^

It was rumoured that international teams such as EHOME, and MYM and local team, KS will be attending the tournament as well. Do you believe that you can beat these teams, especially Ks with their home ground advantage?

We just can say that we will do our best. We never underestimate any of our opponents and we respect those teams, they are very strong.

What are the differences for you between playing in an online and offline tournament?

There is a very big difference between online and offline tournaments. Offline is no lag and often more crowded when we play. Online tournaments within Asia is better than European/American tournaments because it's not laggy. But we learn a lot from playing against European teams which is why we do it, their playstyle is very different from Asians and it adds our tactic references.

How does the lag influences Fnatic’s gameplay? How many seconds of delay do you guys have to go through normally when playing with an European host?

I cant say how many seconds delay exactly, I just know that we play on 280+ ping and we cant farm well, maneuver, or sometimes we play like we are dumb. What we don’t like the most are hosts which spike and freeze a lot. Usually we play on Rinoa’s host (East US) and it doesn’t spike and freeze as much. We like her host.

How do you think this lag issue should be dealt with?

I don't know. Maybe in 5 years, internet in the world will not lag at all between Asia and Europe hehehe. But we hope European teams will understand our lag issues and not force us to play on a spiky and freezing host

What is next for Fnatic?

Next for Fnatic are SMM, ADCII Playoffs, KODE5 online, GOA2 and SKOTH3.

Any last shoutouts?

We want to thank Fnatic and our sponsors MSI, Steelseries, CoolerMaster, ProGamer, BestPoker.com, GetFufu.co.nr and UGAME. Also thanks to all our fans for always supporting us ^.^ That makes us strong and motivated. Fnatic all the way!!!

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